Libertarianism and White Racial Nationalism – Anyone Fancy Replying?

[Note: Kevin MacDoanld is the high priest of an increasingly influential strand within the white nationalist movement. Though I think this essay on libertarianism is at least ill-informed, I suggest that his views should be taken seriously. Sooner or later, the current order of things within the English-speaking world will collapse. The ruling class will then look about for a new paradigm, and will be drawn to anything that looks coherent and likely to work. That will be our chance – and it will also be the chance of people like Professor MacDonald. Anyone who ignores his views, or dismisses them with a few stock phrases, does our movement and the future of mankind a disservice. We do need to ensure that his views are subject to fair and searching criticism.

It is necessary for him to attack libertarianism, as it is an anomaly in terms of his worldview. Marxism and Freudianism are both destructive and largely Jewish. Therefore, he can fit them very easily into his scheme of Jewish enmity. Libertarianism, on the other hand, is opposed to these attacks on our civilisation, and is built on roots that go deep within our civilisation – and is, in its modern forms, largely Jewish. Ayn Rand, Ludvig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, et al, must somehow be fitted into his scheme. Only then can what he regards as the main rival alternative to the current order of things be dismissed.

Libertarians are opposed to the current order of things. We are against politically correct police states at home, and against all moves to global government. I suggest that we should also take a much more sceptical view of big business than we have traditionally expressed. At the same time, our utopia is one of life, liberty and property – of a cleaned up western civilisation within which all mankind can participate. If we want to make sure that the end of the current order of things will take us closer to our own utopia – and not be an excuse for a white gentiles only police state – we need to take on Professor MacDonald’s strain of white nationalism. We need to do this in the same way as we took on the Marxists in the last century. That means a wide reading of their literature and a dispassionate critique.

The mainstream Jewish organisations have utterly failed in this duty. Smears by association and calls for censorship win no arguments. It may be a pathetically small sum, but the Libertarian Alliance will pay £50 for the best response to this essay. If any Jewish organisation has the sense to add to this prize, we will pass the money straight over to the lucky winner. Sean Gabb]

Greg Johnson, the previous editor of TOQ, had the wonderful idea for an issue on how Libertarianism intersects with issues of White racial nationalism. The topic is an important one. Unlike explicit assertions of White identity and interests, libertarianism is considered part of the conservative mainstream. It doesn’t ruffle the feathers of the multicultural powers that be. Indeed, as discussed in several of the articles here—particularly the article by Simon Krejsa, libertarianism is an ideology of national dissolution that would greatly exacerbate problems resulting from immigration.

IGNORING THE REAL WORLD: LIBERTARIANISM AS UTOPIAN METAPHYSICS
Several prominent libertarians have advocated open borders except for immigrants clearly intent on violating personal or property rights. As Krejsa notes, libertarians ignore the reality that the peoples crowding our shores often have powerful ethnic ties and that they are typically organized in well-funded, aggressive ethnic organizations. These ethnic organizations have a vital interest in a strong central government able to further their interests in a wide range of areas, from welfare benefits to foreign policy. In other words, they act far more as a corporate entity than as a set of isolated individuals. Further, the immigration policy advocated by Libertarians ignores the reality of racial and ethnic differences in a broad spectrum of traits critical to success in contemporary societies, particularly IQ, criminality, and impulsivity. Social utility forms no part of the thinking of Libertarianism.

In reading these articles, one is struck by the fact that libertarianism is in the end a metaphysics. That is, it simply posits a minimal set of rights (to ownership of one’s own body, ownership of private property, and the freedom to engage in contracts) and unflinchingly follows this proposition to its logical conclusion. The only purpose of government is to prohibit the “physical invasion” of another’s person or property. It is a utopian philosophy based on what ought to be rather than on a sober understanding of the way humans actually behave. Not surprisingly, as Simon Lote and Farnham O’Reilly point out, there have never been any pure libertarian societies. There are powerful reasons for that.

Indeed, libertarianism philosophy reminds me of Kant’s categorical imperative which states that one must “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” The imperative defines a conception of moral obligation, but it certainly does not follow that others will behave in a moral way. One would be naive indeed to suppose that a philosophy of moral obligations would make people nicer. Kant would never have said that we should arrange society on the supposition that people will behave in the ways that they are morally obligated.

Similarly, the libertarian idea that we should alter government as if the governed are an atomistic universe of individuals is oblivious to the fact that a great many people will continue to behave on the basis of their group identity, whether based on ethnicity or on a voluntary association like a corporation. They will continue to engage in networking (often with co-ethnics) and they will pursue policies aimed at advancing their self-interest as conditioned by group membership. If they have access to the media, they will craft media messages aimed at converting others to agree with their point of view—messages that need not accurately portray the likely outcomes of policy choices. Media-powerful groups may also craft messages that take advantage of people’s natural proclivities for their own profit without regard to the weaknesses of others—a form of the unleashing of Darwinian competition discussed in the following.

This minimal list of human interests is grounded in neither theology nor natural science. A focus of Trudie Pert’s essay is the conflict between libertarian philosophy and traditional Catholic collectivism with its group-protecting function based on the concept of natural law. From the standpoint of evolutionary biology, a society engineered according to libertarian ideology would unleash a Darwinian struggle of competition between individuals and groups. Since, as Vitman Tanka notes, there is nothing in libertarian ideology to prevent voluntary associations, people in a libertarian society would naturally band together to advance their interests. Such groups would see their own interests as best satisfied by a strong government that is on their side.

The libertarian utopia would thus be chronically unstable. Indeed, Krejsa quotes Peter Brimelow who notes that a libertarian society with completely open borders would result in enormous pressures for powerful state control — immigration as the “Viagra of the state”: “Immigrants, above all immigrants who are racially and culturally distinct from the host population, are walking advertisements for social workers and government programs and the regulation of political speech — that is to say, the repression of the entirely natural objections of the host population.”

A libertarian utopia would also unleash exploitation of the weak and disorganized by the strong and well-organized. Both Pert and Krejsa point out that a libertarian society would result in violations of normative moral intuitions. For example, parents could sell their children into slavery. Such behavior would indeed be evolutionarily maladaptive, because as slaves their reproductive opportunities would be at the whim of their master. But such an option might appeal to some parents who value other things more than their children as the result of genetically or environmentally induced psychiatric impairment, manipulative media influence, or drug-induced stupor in a society lacking social controls on drugs.

Moreover, in the libertarian Eden, regulations on marriage and sexual behavior would disappear so that wealthy men would be able to have dozens of wives and concubines while many men would not have access to marriage. Sexual competition among males would therefore skyrocket.

In fact, the social imposition of monogamy in the West has had hugely beneficial consequences on the society as a whole, including greater investment in children and facilitating a low pressure demographic profile that resulted in cumulative investment and rising real wages over historical time.[1] In other words, progress.

Admittedly, benefits to the society as a whole are of no concern to libertarians. But, from an evolutionary perspective, they ought to be. An evolutionary approach has the virtue of being solidly grounded in a science of human interests, both explicit and implicit, whereas Libertarianism relies on metaphysical assertions. The fact is that dysfunctional societies are ultimately non-viable and likely to be pushed aside by more functional groups. Without the economic expansion brought about by the social controls on sexual behavior, the West may well have not embarked on the expansion and colonization beginning in the 15th century. Ultimately, social controls on sexual behavior benefited the vast majority of Whites.

The same can be said of social controls on sexual behavior. Social support for high-investment parenting has always been a critical feature of Western social structure until the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Since then, all of the markers of family stability have headed south — including divorce rates and births out of wedlock for all races and ethnic groups. (Nevertheless, there are very large differences between races and ethnic groups in conformity with J. Philippe Rushton’s life history theory of race differences.[2])
But this relative lack of social support for marriage has had very different effects depending on traits like IQ. For example, a well-known study in behavior genetics shows that the heritability of age of first sexual intercourse increased dramatically after the sexual revolution of the 1960′s.[3] In other words, after the social supports for traditional sexuality disappeared, genetic influences became more important. Before the sexual revolution, traditional sexual mores applied to everyone. After the revolution, genes mattered more. People with higher IQ were able to produce stable families and marriages, but lower-IQ people were less prone to doing so. These trends have been exacerbated by the current economic climate.

The triumph of the culture of critique therefore resulted in a more libertarian climate for sexual behavior that tended to produce family pathology among people at the lower end of the bell curve for IQ, particularly an increase in low-investment parenting. This in turn is likely to have decreased the viability of the society as a whole.[4]

COULD WHITE ADVOCACY BE THE OUTCOME OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS?
It is interesting to consider whether a vibrant White advocacy movement could be the outcome of voluntary association in a society constructed along libertarian lines, as proposed by Tänka, who uses the Amish as an example. That is, Whites could come to realize that they have a natural interest in forming a voluntary association to advance their interests as Whites, much as Jews have done since the Enlightenment. (In traditional societies, Jewish groups were tightly controlled to prevent defection and “cheating,” i.e., engaging in acts such as undermining Jewish monopolies or informing on other Jews that were deemed harmful by the Jewish community as a whole. Traditional Jewish society was the antithesis of libertarianism.)

Such an outcome is theoretically possible but (like the rest of the libertarian wish list) would be unlikely to occur in the real world. In the real world, media-powerful groups and groups able to dominate prestigious academic institutions would indoctrinate people against identifying as Whites bent on pursuing White interests, as they do now. In the real world, there would be financial inducements to avoid White advocacy, including well-paid careers opposing White advocacy and economic consequences meted out by powerful voluntary associations, especially associations dominated by non-Whites hostile to White identity and interests — also the case now. A White advocacy movement would therefore have a great deal of inertia to overcome.

And yet, voluntary association is the only way that a powerful White advocacy movement could develop. We are seeing the beginnings of such movements, especially in Europe with the rise of explicitly anti-Muslim and anti-immigration parties.

However, if a White-advocacy movement gains power, it would be foolish indeed to retain a libertarian political structure of minimal government. As noted by Farnham O’Reilly, the rights of the individual must remain subservient to the welfare of the group. If indeed White interests are worth defending, then furthering those interests must be the first priority. That would mean acting against media-powerful interests that produce messages countering White identity and acting against voluntary associations (such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League) that mete out economic penalties against Whites who identify as White and wish to pursue their interests as Whites. (It is noteworthy at of the nine authors of this issue of TOQ, seven use pseudonyms. The exceptions, Robert Griffin and I, both have tenure and thus have protected positions.)

Indeed, one might note that the greatest obstacle to the triumph of a White advocacy movement now is that current Western societies are organized along (imperfectly) libertarian lines. That is, the Western commitment to economic individualism (which allows vast concentrations of wealth by individuals) combined with the legitimacy of using that wealth to influence government policy, control media messages, and penalize White advocates, has allowed the creation of a semi-Darwinian world where very powerful interests have aligned themselves against White advocacy. This in turn is leading to natural selection against White people as they become overwhelmed demographically by non-Whites. In such a world, Whites, especially non-elite Whites, will eventually be at the mercy of hostile non-White groups with historical grudges against them — a category that at the very least includes Jews, Blacks, and Mexicans. Again, there is no reason whatever to suppose that a society engineered along libertarianism lines would prevent associations based on ethnic/racial ties. The racialization of American politics in the semi-libertarian present is well advanced, with over 90% of Republican votes coming from Whites, and increasing percentages of Whites voting Republican.

LIBERTARIANISM FITS WITH THE EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY OF WHITES
Nevertheless, having pointed to the pitfalls of libertarianism, it must be said that the individual freedom and liberty that are the hallmarks of libertarianism “feel good” to us Europeans, as emphasized by Simon Lote and Robert Griffin. All things equal, we would rather live in a society with minimal restraint on individual behavior.

(However, all things may not be equal, as Simon Krejsa points out, since the vast majority of Whites would prefer to live in a non-libertarian society that was predominantly White rather than a libertarian society that was predominantly Black. Race matters.)

In my view, individualism is an ethnic trait of Europeans — the only group to have invented individualistic societies. (Ironically, for the reasons set out above, the semi-libertarian structure of contemporary Western societies may ultimately be the demise of the West.) This judgment is based on a variety of data.[5] For example, European family patterns indicate that Europeans, far more than other groups, have been able to free themselves from clan-based social structure (a form of collectivism) and develop societies with a high level of public trust needed to create modern economies.

That’s perhaps why reading Ayn Rand has been so exciting for so many of us, as emphasized by Gregory Hood in his prize-winning essay. We thrill to the idea of talented, productive, competent people who are able to create their own worlds and are not bound by the petty conventions of society — who seem larger than life. It is, as Hood points out, a White World, peopled by heroic Nordics, with “an Aryan code of achievement, appreciation of hierarchy, and a robustly defended philosophy of greatness“; it is “a world where uniquely Western values such as individualism, the rule of law, and limited government are taken for granted.”

I confess that when I first read Atlas Shrugged in high school, I was very much taken with it. Readers of her work naturally cast themselves in the role of John Galt or similar Randian super-person. Her characters appeal to our vanity and our natural desire to live free of burdensome constraints and to be completely in charge of our own destiny. I recall when driving across the country shortly after reading it that I took special notice of all the signs of eponymous businesses— Johnson’s Lumber Co., Hansen’s Furniture, Mario’s Pizza, Ford auto- mobiles. All were the creations of individuals with drive and ambition — people creating their own worlds.

It’s an attractive image, but as an evolutionist I understand that humans must think in terms of the larger picture — what Frank Salter terms “ethnic genetic interests.”[6] And to effectively further our ethnic genetic interests, we must take account of the real world and accept the need for restraints on people’s behavior, as argued above. The good news is that, as Hood notes (see also Tänka’s essay), the road to a sense of White advocacy and a sense that Whites have interests often begins with Ayn Rand and libertarianism.

The European tendency toward individualism is also associated with moral universalism (as opposed to moral particularlism, famously, “Is it good for the Jews?”) and science (i.e, inquiry free from in- group/outgroup biases, with each scientist an independent agent unattached to any ingroup). The tendency toward moral particularism is especially important when thinking about Libertarianism. The European tendency toward moral universalism implies a relatively strong commitment to principled morality — that is, moral principles that are adhered to independent of cost to self or family.[7] This contrasts with non-European societies where there is a much greater tendency for family and kinship ties to color moral judgments.[8]

This devotion to principled morality is most apparent in the Puritan tradition of American culture — likely the result of prolonged evolution in small, exogamous, egalitarian groups in northern Europe.[9] An egregious example is Justice John Paul Stevens who recently vacated the court, allowing President Obama to replace him with Elena Kagan, an undistinguished law school graduate who benefited greatly from Jewish ethnic networking and who is likely to reflect to values of the mainstream left-liberal Jewish community.

Stevens therefore is the ultimate non-ethnic actor, allowing himself to be replaced during a Democratic administration that would be very unlikely to appoint someone like himself. This lack of an ethnic sense is reflected in his writing:

“The ideas of liberty and equality have been an irresistible force in motivating leaders like Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln, schoolteachers like Nathan Hale and Booker T. Washington, the Philippine Scouts who fought at Bataan, and the soldiers who scaled the bluff at Omaha Beach,” he wrote in an unusually lyrical dissent [in a 1989 flag burning case]. “If those ideas are worth fighting for—and our history demonstrates that they are—it cannot be true that the flag that uniquely symbolizes their power is not itself worthy of protection.[10]

Ideas are worth fighting for, but Stevens has no interest in advancing the cause of WASPs as an ethnic group. Here he idealizes non-White Filipinos fighting alongside Whites to secure a set of principles. He has no concern that there will be no more WASPs on the court for the foreseeable future, presumably because he thinks that what’s important is that certain ideas will continue to guide the country.

The multicultural left should build statues to Stevens and David Souter also appointed by a Republican president and replaced by a non-White [Sonia Sotomayor] in a Democrat administration) as heroes of the hopeful non-White future. Their principled sense that ideas matter and that race and ethnicity are not at all important is exactly how the multicultural left wants all Whites to behave — WASPs as the proposition ethnic group heralding America as the proposition nation.

This devotion to universalist ideas is a strong tendency in the liberal WASP subculture that has been such an important strand of American intellectual history.[11] (The exception was during the 1920s when the Protestant elite sided with the rest of America when they led the battle to enact the immigration restriction law of 1924 which drastically restricted immigration and explicitly attempted to achieve an ethnic status quo as of 1890. Even then, there were substantial numbers of WASPs who opposed immigration restriction.)

In the 19th century, this liberal WASP tradition could be seen in their attraction to utopian communities and their strong moral revulsion to slavery that animated the cause of abolition.[12] Ideas matter and are worth fighting for, even if more than 600,000 White people died in the battle — ”Let us die to make men free” as the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” urged. They had the idea that people are able to fashion moral ideals and then bring them into being as a result of political activism, a view that is certainly borne out by contemporary psychology.[13] They were individualists who saw the world not in terms of in-groups and outgroups, but as composed of unique individuals. Their relatively tepid ethnocentrism and their ethnic proneness to moral universalism made them willing allies of the rising class of Jewish intellectuals who came to dominate intellectual discourse beginning at least by the 1930s. Even by the 1920s, the triumph of Boasian anthropology meant that appeals to WASP ethnicity would fall on deaf ears in the academic world.

Libertarianism thus fits well with this tradition. Indeed, Eric Kaufmann labels one of the 19th-century liberal American traditions “libertarian anarchism,” typified by Benjamin Tucker, publisher Liberty, a journal devoted to unfettered individualism and opposed to prohibitions on non-invasive behavior (“free love,” etc.). Moreover, as noted above, libertarianism is nothing if not strongly principled. Indeed, libertarianism is addicted to its fundamental principles of individual freedom no matter what practical costs may result to self, to others or to the society as a whole. The sign of principled behavior is that other interests, prototypically self-interest (paradoxically enough in the case of libertarianism), are irrelevant, and that is certainly the case with libertarianism.

IS LIBERTARIANISM A JEWISH INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT?
Finally, we must ask, “Is it good for the Jews?” Simon Lote notes that libertarians tend to be “cosmopolitan White males [who] are led by a smaller but more eminent group of Jews who are attracted to the political philosophy for entirely different reasons.” Jews are attracted to libertarianism because

[the] cosmopolitan universalism at [the core of libertarianism] is a mighty ideological weapon to weaken White identity and loyalty and so ensures that Jewish interests are better preserved and advanced. After all, if one regards property rights as sacred, the idea of breaking the Jewish stranglehold over the media by government anti-trust legislation would be considered abhorrent. Libertarians also tend to be in favor of massive non-White immigration which is also favored by Jews as an ethnic strategy aimed at lessening the political and cultural influence of Whites.[14]

Indeed, Trudie Pert begins her essay with the following quote from The Culture of Critique:

Jews benefit from open, individualistic societies in which barriers to upward mobility are removed, in which people are viewed as individuals rather than as members of groups, and in which intellectual discourse is not prescribed by institutions like the Catholic Church that are not dominated by Jews.[15]

Libertarianism was not reviewed as a Jewish intellectual movement of The Culture of Critique, although the discussion of the Frankfurt School as a Jewish movement in Chapter 5 emphasizes that it pathologized the group commitments of non-Jews while nevertheless failing to provide a similar critique of Jewish group commitment. It noted that

a common component of anti-Semitism among academics during the Weimar period [in Germany] was a perception that Jews attempted to undermine patriotic commitment and social cohesion of society. Indeed, the perception that Jewish critical analysis of non-Jewish society was aimed at dissolving the bonds of cohesiveness within the society was common among educated non-Jewish Germans, including university professors …. One academic referred to the Jews as “the classic party of national decomposition.”

In the event, National Socialism developed as a cohesive non-Jewish group strategy in opposition to Judaism, a strategy that completely rejected the Enlightenment ideal of an atomized society based on individual rights in opposition to the state. As I have argued in [Separation and Its Discontents] (Ch. 5), in this regard National Socialism was very much like Judaism, which has been throughout its history fundamentally a group phenomenon in which the rights of the individual have been submerged in the interests of the group.

Further:

The prescription that … society adopt a social organization based on radical individualism would indeed be an excellent strategy for the continuation of Judaism as a cohesive, collectivist group strategy. Research … on cross-cultural differences in individualism and collectivism indicates that anti-Semitism would be lowest in individualist societies rather than societies that are collectivist and homogeneous apart from Jews. A theme of [A People That Shall Dwell Alone] (Ch. 8) is that European societies (with the notable exceptions of the National Socialist era in Germany and the medieval period of Christian religious hegemony—both periods of intense anti-Semitism) have been unique among the economically advanced traditional and modern cultures of the world in their commitment to individualism. … The presence of Judaism as a highly successful and salient group strategy provokes anti-individualist responses from [non-Jews]. Collectivist cultures [like Judaism]… place a much greater emphasis on the goals and needs of the ingroup rather than on individual rights and interests. Collectivist cultures develop an “unquestioned attachment” to the ingroup, including “the perception that ingroup norms are universally valid (a form of ethnocentrism), automatic obedience to ingroup authorities, and willingness to fight and die for the ingroup.[16] These characteristics are usually associated with distrust of and unwillingness to cooperate with outgroups.” In collectivist cultures morality is conceptualized as that which benefits the group, and aggression and exploitation of outgroups are acceptable.[17]

People in individualist cultures, in contrast, show little emotional attachment to ingroups. Personal goals are paramount, and socialization emphasizes the importance of self-reliance, independence, individual responsibility, and “finding yourself.”[18] Individualists have more positive attitudes toward strangers and outgroup members and are more likely to behave in a prosocial, altruistic manner to strangers. Because they are less aware of in-group-outgroup boundaries, people in individualist cultures are less likely to have negative attitudes toward outgroup members.[19] They often disagree with ingroup policy, show little emotional commitment or loyalty to ingroups, and do not have a sense of common fate with other ingroup members. Opposition to outgroups occurs in individualist societies, but the opposition is more “rational” in the sense that there is less of a tendency to suppose that all of the outgroup members are culpable for the misdeeds of a few. Individualists form mild attachments to many groups, whereas collectivists have an intense attachment and identification to a few ingroups.[20]

The expectation is that individualists will tend to be less predisposed to anti-Semitism and more likely to blame any offensive Jewish behavior as resulting from transgressions by individual Jews rather than stereotypically true of all Jews. However Jews, as members of a collectivist subculture living in an individualistic society, are themselves more likely to view the Jewish–non- Jewish distinction as extremely salient and to develop stereotypically negative views about non-Jews.

Pert’s article suggests that libertarianism functioned as a Jewish intellectual movement for at least some of its main Jewish proponents. (No one is saying that libertarianism is a Jewish movement to the extent that, say, psychoanalysis was in its early years, when virtually all its practitioners were Jews. For the reasons indicated above, libertarianism is very attractive to Europeans.) In order for a movement to qualify as a Jewish movement, participants must have a Jewish identity and see their work as furthering Jewish interests. Particularly interesting is the animosity shown by Ludwig von Mises toward Christianity and particularly toward the Catholic Church as enemies of freedom. (One might also note Ayn Rand’s one-sided and impassioned defense of Israel and her denunciations of Arabs as racist murderers of innocent Jews indicate a strong Jewish identity and an unwillingness to condemn Jewish collectivism, either in Israel or in traditional and to a considerable extent in contemporary Diaspora societies. She also remonstrates against the “racism” of U.S. foreign policy prior to FDR, again suggesting views that are highly characteristic of the Jewish mainstream.[21])

For the reasons indicated above, there is little doubt that Judaism would benefit from a libertarian social order. In addition to lowering anti- Jewish attitudes, Pert notes that Jews as an well-organized, highly networked elite would be likely to be able to exploit non-Jews economically because non-Jews would not be protected by the state and because non-Jews would not likely be able to form cohesive protective groups in the absence of state involvement. (I have proposed that in the 4th century, voluntary associations centered around the Catholic Church served a protective function against Jewish economic domination, particularly the enslavement of non-Jews by Jews.[22] As expected, this protective society then attempted (and succeeded) in obtaining political power by seizing control of the state.

In other words, these Catholics actively fought against a social order in which there were no safeguards against the exploitation of non-Jews by Jews. (To the extent that it permitted slavery of non-Jews by Jews, the previous social order was libertarian.) The libertarian rationalization of voluntary servitude is particularly noteworthy given the reality of Jewish economic domination in several historical eras.

5,000 words may be reasonable. I don’t think anyone should try expanding the remit I’ve given to a general attack on the “Culture of Critique.” That needs to be done, but the essay I have presently in mind is a defence of libertarianism from the charge that it is another ideology of disintegration to serve alleged jewish group interests.

Well, I may have a stab at that essay. But one quick thought on the article (which I must admit to reading a little rapidly as I’m up to my ears in rude cartoon production right now) is that as it progressed I wasn’t too surprised when we got to where Macdonald is really coming from as he started extolling the virtues of the Puritans. He is thus pushing something unremarkable but sadly commonplace; the idea that a set of values which only became hegemonic in the nineteenth century- as a direct result of the kind of politicing he so objects to by the Jews- are normative for Western European Aryan whatever-he-thinks-we-ares. The particular irony in this case being that the Puritans were trying to emulate the Jews and get their faith back to its Jewish roots- most visibly with Sabbatarians.

It is also rather irritating that he constantly confuses a social analysis with an evolutionary one, by the simple method of tacking on “which would reduce their reproductive success” and the like at the end of an analysis. It’s like, “coalminers will strike for more pay, which will improve the survival of their offspring, therefore it’s an evolutionary analysis” which is silly.

That, and he doesn’t seem to really understand libertarianism anyway. “Libertarians would allow children to be sold into slavery”. Sigh. That’s about the first on the list of Things You Cannot Do in a libertarian society.

For example, Samuel Adams supported government schooling because he thought that a people must be educated in religion and in “virtue” generally in order to make a Republican constitution work (what S. Adams would have thought of a modern , paticularly American, school I shudder to think). Like the English Puritans of a century before he wanted to keep plays (at least imoral) plays our of Boston for the same reason – people must be MADE to be good. The power to make good choices must be created by limiting the choices human beings could make (of course some might say that produces moral cripples – not real men and women of moral courage).

He was not alone in this – Montesqieu thought that “virtue” was the key word for a Republic (one reason he was wary of of the idea). And so did Buchanan (the Scots one – who argued for the control of the government by the people as far back as the 16th century – but only by a moral people of high virtue and religion, and how does one get such a people……). People of many different cultures could be loyal to the same free monarchy (i.e government limited by law – whose primary concern was keeping the peace and not much else), or could be slaves of the same despotism – but only a people united in their culture (and their virtue) could be citizens of a Republic (in this view of a Republic – there are other opinions). Even Republics known for their moral corruption (such as Venice) had detailed state administraion of moral conduct (indeed especially those places known for their corruption had detailed codes of laws covering just about everything. Of course such Republics as Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik) were not known for either their moral corruption – or their detailed state codes governing every aspect of behaviour… but let us leave that aside.

One can also see it in pre Christian times – the idea that a people of virtue is needed for a Republc, and the idea that the state must produce this virtue.

Cato the Elder (a man I detest) is the classic example – but one can even see it (at times) In Aristotle.

The idea that the function of the Polis is to make people “just and good” not just to “restain them from attaching each other” (the view of Lycrophon).

From this comes one strain in Catholic thinking (although there is also an anti collectivist strain – oddly enough, also drawn from Aristotle), as well as the Puritan view.

What virtue has got to do with skin colour (or “race”) generally I leave to others – I think the whole association of moral conduct with “race” is utterly absurd.

But then with my “tainted blood” – “I would think that”.

On the Puritan argument generally…….

Gladstone said it best (forgive me – I am quoting from memory).

“Of one thing I am certain – it is not from the state that there will be moral improvement”.

Using force and fear to try and improve moral spirit and character (the moral development of human beings) is like fornicating to spread virginity.

Paul, the question of whether virtue is needed for a republic is an interesting one. In a sense, it is true; in that a people will create a society that reflects their nature. A society of psychotic cannibals will not produce a pacifist liberal republic :)

The question really comes down to what counts as “virtue”. The Puritan shopping list of virtues is very long and, I believe, mostly incorrect. As a libertarian, I would say that the single actual requisite virtue is not on their list; that of acceptance of one’s fellow man. If the Christian can accept that his neighbour is a Jew, and the Jew can accept that his neighbour is a Christian, then you will have a stable society; if they cannot accept each ohter you will not. The Puritans were and are singularly intolerant of their fellow men. The rabid anti-catholicism of their nineteenth cnetury incarnation being an obvious example. They have made the Anglosphere an intolerant place. It is ironic that Macdonald attacks Von Mises for criticising Catholicism; back in the Good Old Days, American Yankee Protestants were trying to stop their country being flooded by not Jews or Muslims, but Catholics.

Without prejudging the issue, Ian B might be the winner here. However, I was deeply unimpressed with your attacks on Kevin Carson. I will say now that Kevin MacDonald, for all he may be wrong, is a scholar of much sophistication. Yes, he seems to preside over something of a cult at the Occidental Observer – like Ayn Rand, he is in the habit of quoting himself, and his other writers all quote him. Even so, it is worth looking the the big chunks of his Culture of Critique that you’ll find on his websites, and at his shorter commentaries and explications.

If KM were a beerhall anti-semite, I’d not be offering anything from our small pot of cash for a refutation. Because this is worth refuting, it is worth refuting properly or not at all.

For the avoidance of doubt, the £50 prize is open to anyone who cares to enter. It may have been observed that I am sufficiently fair-minded to have awarded large prizes even to people I heartily detested.

Tony – that depends on what view of natual law (if any) that people have, and are willing to enforce. The old Western character – “why are you hunting down….?”, “because he shot dead an unarmed man”, “are you a lawman, or after a bounty, or was the person killed a friend or kin of yours?” , “none of those things – the person killed had no one, so someone has to see that justice is done, and it might as well be me”.

Of course fate can play cruel tricks on people like that. The last time Kit Carson did that sort of thing (I can not remember if it was a paid job or not – sometimes he was paid, sometimes not) was when he went after some children who had been abducted – he found the tortured and mutilated corpse of a boy. And by the boy was a dime novel, about how a hero saves a boy in the nick of time – and the name of the hero in the work? Kit Carson of course. He hunted down the people responsbile – but he never really recovered.

The Rothbardian view is actually rather similar to the Roman Catholic (or other Christian – although one can trace the various lines of thought back to the various schools of Classical philosophy, Aristotelian but also Stoic and even Epicurian) view (although not on abortion) – holding that people do not have the right to sell their childen into slavery (or to kill them), And that it is the moral duty (part of the virtue of justice) to stop people doing that

Some libertarians, for example Thomas Woods, are quite open that their view of natural law is of this type (indeed Woods breaks with Rothbard on abortion).

In short you have a point Tony – there is no full agreement among libertarians over the exact implications of the nonaggression principle. We may all agree on opposing slavery – but there are other things we do not agree on.

Puritans vary – but actually even the intollerant Puritans did not have a conception of virtue vastly different from nonPuritans.

Thrift and hard work yes – but also charity and taking pleasure in God’s world.

For it is myth (at least for most Puritans) held that pleasure was an evil.

Study was a duty – but it was a good thing (a thing of satisfaction, not only moral good) to study. Even music and song (for good kinds) were not evil to most Puritans (although at some times and some places Puritans were just as nasty as their popular image has it). The anti Catholic thing? Yes that is real – although some of it was based on things that Catholics had done to Protestants (hate brings forth hate – wrong breeds more wrong).

Certainly Sam Adams was a kindly and tolerant (including tolerant of non Christians) man – although one (in my view) holding to the mistaken view that state education (and state regulation) could generally promote good character. In short in denying people the chance to choose one would develop the control of their reason over their passions – and make them people more likely to do the right thing. Rather than holding that only in having a free choice between good and evil that a human being can grow.

I would say there is a contradiction between the sort of strong independent people he admired (people who CHOOSE to the right thing) and his efforts to limit individual choices by state action – but then I am writing with two centuries of hidesight.

And, of course, people are mixed – it is not just a case of good Puritans and bad Puritans.

Take a kindly man, a lover of good conversation and so on – known to be generious and tolerant in his ways.

Also the author of the first American work denouning slavery (“Selling of Joseph” 1700).

Yet the name of this man was Sewall – yes Judge Sewall of the SELAM WITCH TRIALS.

Of course if one believes in witchcraft and believes that one has Satan’s agents …….

And (yes) Judge Sewall came to bitterly regret what he had done……

But one can not bring back the dead.

Sir Walter Scott understands the type.

In “Old Morality” he shows the Puritan type Scots (the enemies of his own people in the old Scottish conflcts) as in many ways noble.

But he also understands their limitations.

For example, in “Ivenhoe” – the Commander of the Templers (yes a Catholic – but Catholics and athiests, ANYONE, can fall into the same traps that a low church Protestant can) is described as “not a cruel or even severe man”.

But he is prepared to burn Rebecca to death. Because he has stopped seeing her as an individual (a good person – who he should not be trying to kill, but actually trying to defend, if need be at the expense of his own life), but as a member of a group.

Given that people’s resources of time and effort are limited I just do not think that KMD’s views are worth the effort of criticising. Carson is a different story (he may be wrong on many things but he also has interesting and important things to say of relevance to libertarians) but why should we spend hours of effort refuting KMD’s barely coherent falsehoods?

Because they are worth criticising. KMD is not in the same league as Harold Covington. He has produced a body of scholarly writing that appears to explain any set of facts brought into view. I have seen his evolutionary approach – and even some of his wording – reproduced by people who have not heard his name. If you choose to ignore him, good luck to you. The Libertarian Alliance chooses to take him seriously enough to offer £50 for a partial refutation. If no one else will, I shall have to put it onto my own immensely long list of things to do. But it will need to go right at the bottom and work its way up.

I don’t have the time to critique the whole piece, but if this passage is anything to go by, then the exercise would take a very long time indeed. KMD writes this:

“In traditional societies, Jewish groups were tightly controlled to prevent defection and “cheating,” i.e., engaging in acts such as undermining Jewish monopolies or informing on other Jews that were deemed harmful by the Jewish community as a whole. Traditional Jewish society was the antithesis of libertarianism.”

This passage is hard to criticise partly because it is hard to know what it means. KMD does not explain what he means by “in traditional societies” or indeed who is supposed to be doing the controlling.

Yet we may infer that he means something along these lines: that traditional jewish communities before the 20th century exercised control over their members in a manner that was decidedly non-libertarian. In other words, they were not voluntary associations but rather were controlled by force in a manner that involved the wrongful infringement of property rights.

Now I do not pretend to be an expert on Jewish communal history. But the notion that any Jewish community after the time of King David and prior to 1948 was in a position to control its members by force, is absurd. For two millenia, jews have lived amongst gentiles of various descriptions and subject to the jurisdiction of the relevant rulers. It is true that jews have applied their own legal system to their own members (halacha) but this does not operate by force (the arbitration awards of jewish courts are enforceable under the Arbitration Act but this is a side issue). The only practical sanction available to jews against other jews for centuries has been that of ostracism in its various forms.

This reflects the fact that jewish communities have for centuries been voluntary associations, lacking the powers of statehood. It is also no digression to point out that until relatively recently, they have had had highly developed systems of communal welfare based entirely upon charity, under which the wealthy supported the poor without recourse to gentile funds.

I simply cannot understand how any of this is antithetical to libertarianism. Communities based upon voluntary association which provided charity based welfare to their members within a framework of respect for property rights, are surely wholly consistent with the tenets of liberty.

KMD refers in particular to the prevention of defection and cheating.

Jews are of course notorious for wishing to keep their members within the fold. But this is not achieved by any method antithetical to liberty. It is achieved by a judicious mix of social carrot and stick. This is hardly unique to jews. It is characteristic of many voluntary associations and clan like groups. They do not like to lose members. But how is this anti-libertarian. As long as no wrongful force is used, what is the problem?

As for the prevention of cheating, it is again unclear what KMD means as he gives no examples beyond uselessly generalised ones. He talks of the maintenance of jewish monopolies. But what monopolies? Does he mean legally protected monopolies or just trades with a high proportion of jews. If the latter, how is it being suggested that this state of affairs was maintained by force in the traditional societies of which KMD speaks? Did jewish tailors go around killing other jewish tailors who did business with non-jews? Where is the evidence for this? What is the man talking about?

It may be that the rest of the piece is replete with brilliance and wisdom illuminated by apt historical examples, but based on this passage, I rather doubt it.

It isn’t a very good piece. Its importance is, as I said, because KM needs to show that libertarianism is a front for Jewish villainy. I have no doubt he or his disciples will come back soon with something much better. We really do need to take these people seriously – though not because they want to stuff Jews into concentration camps etc etc. Indeed, I am not sure to what extent KM is really woth calling anti-semitic. But he is a racial collectivist; and we should be looking now for our grounds of attack against these ideological rivals for when the present order of things collapses.

I’ve been busily drawing the past couple of days but mentally this has been in the back of my mind. The problem with rebutting it is that it’s sort of in the “not even wrong” category and I keep lapsing into a general critique of, well, Nazism really, because with this article KM falls into Hitler’s problem of having to reconcile both communism and capitalism as Jewish conspiracies.

Having already been cast into the outer darkness by your friend DJ, I will now invite everyone else to cast me there by admitting I spend some time some time ago reading KM’s work, so I am actually rather familar with his general thesis. It boils down to the idea that Jews cooperate to “spoil” host societies in order to themselves prosper. He developed this idea when he was a young New Leftist and noticed that many of his fellow activists were Jews; and observed (not entirely unreasonably in fact) that while they were espousing “racial blindness” to everybody else, were part of a tightly knit Jewish identity which they had no intention of abandoning. So he came to see the New Left as a Jewish movement, designed to cause dismay among Aryans to the benefit of Jews. His schtick is that this is a Neo-Darwinian analysis because anything that benefits JEws benefits Jewish reproduction. I’m not at all sure he can get away with that. Anything that benefits coal miners (e.g. forming unions) benefits the reproduction of coal miners on that basis, but I don’t think that really makes it a theory of natural selection.

Still, whichever way you look at it he’s got this big problem that Jewish Libertarianism would undo everything achieved by Jewish bolshevism. So either Rothbard was a cunning double agent, or there’s something wrong with the theory. KM’s total obsession with Jews basically straw mans Libertarianism as an ideology which is entirely about open borders. It ignores the other 99% of the theory.

Also, I’ve been watching the thread over at the Occidental Observer and frankly the quality of the anti-libertarian argumentation is risible; of the “you would sell everyone into slavery to jewish money lenders” type. Not very encouraging.

Why should you be thrown into the outer darkness for having read the works of KM? In the old days, we used to pride ourselves on having read our Marx and Lenin. You’ve got KM roughly as I see him, only I do think his focus on the Jews can be seen as less an attack than a clever stick and carrot attempt to get them on side. Obviously, I agree with you on the grounds for his dislike of libertarianism.

Now, this will probably form part of my next fatwa. But there should be nothing furtive in our reading of KM or any other white nationalist. We are in the business of spreading a particular ideology. That means that we need to be familiar with the opposition. It is possible that the opposition is right, or partly right. It more probable that the opposition is wrong. In both cases, we need to be fully aware of what is being said. White nationalism will be one of our main rivals for influence when the present order of things collapses. We need to be ready for that. Anyone who sniffs at us for reading The Occidental Observer with close attention is a fool – and a fool unsure of his own rightness.

There are some problems with reading “enemy” works. Firstly there is the question of TIME. Contrary to the statements of Sean Gabb, I do not have “all the time in the world”, like most people my available time is quite limited – so should I (or anyone else) spend what time I have reading Marxist or Nazi works?

However, let us say that one has lots of time on one’s hands and nothing of interest to do with it. Should one then read works by Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, Kevin Carson (or some other “enemy” writer)?

Perhaps YES – after all “know one’s enemy” is an important point, and it is always possible that one is wrong. For example, one can should not just assume that the labour theory of value is false – one should read its defenders (as well as its attackers). Although I would add that modern defenders of the theory have not really provided new, good, arguments that even David Ricardo (two centuries ago) had not used.

There are still two problems with “reading the enemy”:

Firstly there is the “false flag” problem, i.e. actually understanding that they are the enemy. This is something that libertarians (in particular) have to watch out for. Many collectivists use the words “liberty” and “freedom” and say how they want to “get rid of the state” (and so on). So the libertarian may make a mistake and think he (or she) is reading the work of a friend and be led to all sorts of folly.

This is particularly true of young inexperienced libertarians (the sort of people who were so mislead by the “left and right join hands” line of the 1960s – “they say they support liberty and want to get rid of the government in Washington D.C. and bring the soldiers home from the wars overseas, and they believe in peace and voluntary coopeation THEY MUST BE ALLIES!” – sadly few things were further from the truth). Of course that does not mean that Murry Rothbard should be given a pass – he was neither young or inexperienced in the 1960s so trying to make friends with the left (for example by describing the Vietnam war as a “National Liberation Struggle Against Western Imperialism”) was a disgusting thing to do (yes I know Rothbard had noble motives – but ends he wanted were not served by his means, so the defence of “the ends jusifly the means” does not apply, even if one believes in such a defence). As Rothbard himself later admitted – he hoped that libertarians would win over lots of people on the left, but had to watch whilst the young libertarians they actively advised to cooperate with the left ended up being consumed by the left (i.e. turned into collectivists).

Lastly there is another danger – assuming that the interpretation of facts by the “enemy” writers will be false, but the “facts” themselves will be true.

Collectivist writers often have no respect for ordinary truth (their minds are on the “higher” truth – the “truth” of their cause).

So (for example) Karl Marx had no problem with telling lies – quoting people out of context, or changing the words they had said (to reverse the meaning), or even quoting statistics that he had just made up (and which he knew to be totally different from the real numbers). Indeed Karl and Fred use to (as I have said before) pretend to be anti collectivists and write reviews of each other’s work (or get other people to do so) saying “well the conclusions the author presents are defective – but his method of analysis and…..”

If one, for example, reads the “Anti Chomsky Reader” one can see how contempt for basic facts continues among leading enemy intellectuals contues to this day (and, of course, Chomsky actively cooperates with BOTH Marxists and with “neo” Nazis). Chomsky lies and lies and lies – the authors point out some of the lies, but even though they (mostly) deal with short bits of writing it is clear that the experience is a nasty one for them (like having to walk naked through excrement).

What is the point of reading a book where every “fact” may not be a fact at all – but actually a deliberate lie.?

One can not, apart from with vast effort, get to where the writer [or speaker] makes an error in their reasoning – because the basic facts they present (even in passing) will not be facts at all. Actually, of course, one is not really dealing with “errors in reasoning” at all – one is dealing with someone who has contempt for reason (at least if reason comes into conflict with their cause).

One can just about tolerant this is a short work (such as Kevin Carson’s “Contract Feudalism”) where one can work, line by line, through the disinformation and deceptions (although one is never going to spot and refute them all – there are just too many). But to do this with a large book would be like having all one’s teeth taken out.

So, no, I am not going to be rushing out to buy any “neo” Nazi books – not even to refute them.

The warning against the “we can learn from them” or “they have something to contribute” school of thought is important.

This error (and it is an error) goes back to Hegel (or at least to how Hegel was popularly interpretated).

The French Revolution (the thesis) takes liberty “too far”, but idea that one can go back to before the French Revolution (the antithesis) fails to see the contributions (to thought and to life) that the French Revolution makes – so what is needed is the synthesis between the thesis and the antithesis (thus taking us forward in development).

Now leaving aside the “little” problem that this view of the French Revolution (which may or may not be that of Hegel) is quite false (i.e. that the crimes of the French Revolution had nothing to do with taking liberty too far and having too restrictive a view of government action), this still becomes a popular method in thought.

For example Collingwood (the Oxford historian and philosopher famous in the 1920s and 1930s) supported the idea that each important thinker “solves his problems” and that thought (and action) develops by taking on board their insights, but then……….(and on in development).

This led to Collingwood even seeking to find things of value in Marxism – after all Karl Marx was an “important thinker” and Collingwood basic philosophical (really historical) method was to develop the thoughts (to “get inside”) of a person and then work forward with the thoughts of later persons and ……

The terrible error in this method is that it does not deal with the problem of “bullshit” (as in the Yale philosopher, Harry Frankfurt, essay “On Bullshit”).

Some “great thinkers” and “great books” can just be bullshit – hundreds and hundreds of pages of bullshit.

In short the “Oxford Realist” approach of dealing with intellectual history (that of Cook Wilson – passed on to Harold Prichard and Sir William David Ross) of “what did they believe?” (the historical question) and “were they right?” (the philosophical question) is correct. The very approach that Collingwood revolts against (partly because it is common – as in any ordinary person could examine things like that, whereas the great intellectual sees the value in…. and how it contributed to historical development in X, Y, Z. ways).

Trying to combine the two things (history and philosophy) by holding that if someone is historically important (i.e. their ideas have had great effects) the ideas themselves must (at least in part) be of great value – is simply wrong.

Ideas may have huge historical effects (lead to the conqest of vast empires and ….._) and yet be totally false (“bullshit”), and they may even have huge intellectual effects – leading to schools of thought that dominate academia for centuries…. and yet still be totally false.

Even Collingwood himself did not always practice what he preached – for example he rejected (with contempt) the ideas of Narional Socialism.

He did not seek to “get inside” the various National Socialist thinkers to work out “how they solved their problems” and contributed to historical development.

Now if the National Socialists had won the Second World War (“COUNTER FACTIONAL” “UNHISTORICAL” – oh pipe down) and ruled the world for a thousand years, would their ideas (the ideas of many academic intellectuals – for the Nazis had a big following in the universities) have been of any greater truth/intellectual value?

Julius Blumfled (very good comments) quotes the Nazi on “Jewish monopolies”, of course there were no such thing.

Even in lending money for interest (which the Catholic Church taught a complex doctrine that was basically hostile to it) Jews did NOT have a monopoly – nor was it the case that Jews (in banking or any other trade) did not engage in competition against each other. There were guild structrues certainly – but they were certainly no worse among Jews than they were among other people.

On violence – sadly it did exist among Jews, but it was not about economic matters (not in terms of mob violence). The very rare cases of mob violence among Jews occured over religious differences. Most Jews have historically taken their relgion seriously (they have not been like the “Jews” one would find among the “New Left”), and preaching of fellow Jews that was held to insult basic doctrines of that religion could (sometimes) lead to violence.

An example of an innocent error.

Ian mentions (in passing) how forming unions is for the benefit of coal miners.

If “unions” means “fraternities” or “friendly societies” is meant, then this is TRUE (coverage for legal disputes, and coverage for medical care and old age and ….. are clearly good things, examples of mutal aid). In short Ian is not in error at all (in fact that is what I suspect he means).

However, it is one of the central insights of political economy that unions as in the “Strike Threat System” (to use W.H. Hutt’s words) are not just bad for the economy as a whole, in the long term such efforts to monopolize the supply of labour (by “picketing” and other paramilitary tactics) are bad for ordinary union members themselves – for they undermine the industry they union members (if not the union leaders) work in, compared to what it would have been.

Exposing the fallacy that union power (“collective bargaining” pushed by pro union government regulations such as, in the British case, the Acts of 1875 and 1906) can improve (rather than undermine) long term real wages and conditions (compared to what they would have been in a free market) is, I repeat, one of the central (and one of the most imporant) insights of political economy.

Just a minor point Paul; when discussing the coal miners, I wasn’t addressing economics or industrial relations, but rather the issue of whether or not one can apply evolutionary reasoning to such matters. That is a different question.

I regret to observe that Richard Garner posted a message on this thread last Thursday evening. I now hear that he is dead. This is terrible news, and I think everyone will agree that his loss diminishes all of us.

Whether or not “minarchy” is a justified position in theory (and, of course, Richard Garner was well known for his attacks upon it) there is the matter of how to keep a “mimimal” state “minimal”.

The cunning with which governments (and court intellectuals generally) get round both unwritten traditions and written constitutions (for example the “interpretation” of the American and South African Constitutions have amounted to the destruction of large amounts of the most important parts of them) has led many people to despair – no matter how dubious they may be about Richard Garner’s anarchist alternative.

The nonaggression principle in its pure form does indeed forbid such things as taxation (Richard Garner was quite correct in claiming that) – and a philospher is never going to be totally content with “lesser evil” arguments.

For Christ’s sake, Paul, is there nothing that can stop your drivelling irrelevancy? Richard is dead. If you can’t express a few regrets of your own, and can’t even address the points actually in issue on this thread, I do suggest you should at least shut up.

I will say nothing more on this thread. I will instead paste onto the main blog such further information as I am given about Richard’s death and funeral arrangements. I cannot begin to say how saddened I am by the sudden death of a friend and comrade young enough to be my own son.

Sean, I was actually very polite and respectful about the late gentleman’s opinions. As a thinker about political philosphy it was his ideas and arguments he would want remembered – and treated with respect. Which is exactly what I did.

Your reation is utterly irational (at least on the surface – although there may be “method in your madness”).

As for “address the points actually in issue on this thread” I have already done that. I see no reason to waste more words on the Nazi stuff – when you raised the matter of a NON Nazi dying (you are obviously NOT claiming that Richard Garner was a Nazi – that would be an absurd thing to claim).

You mentioned that Richard Garner had died. So I wrote a few respectful words about his ideas – as I did not know the man personally.

You use this as an excuse for another of your personal attacks upon me.

“drivelling irrelevancy”, “shut up” (and so on).

In short you are USING this man’s death as ammunition for your personal feuds.

Paul, I have to say that when I read your reply I thought it was singularly tone deaf.

In this strange online way of the world, I am your friend. I hope I am also Sean’s friend, though he is free of course to entirely despise me if he desires. As are you of course. But I don’t think this is really an appropriate subject to get dragged into your feud.

I did not “know” Richard Garner anywhere near as well as I “know” you, or even Sean, but I jousted with him online. It was in a debate with him that I first learned Max Weber’s definition of the State, for instance. Despite our mere acquaintance, I feel very sad at this news. I’m sure Liberty has lost one of our best; his family and friends have lost a loved one. A terrible thing.

Tone deaf perhaps Ian – I was born in England and have lived here all my life, but I have never mastered the English say-meaningless-but-nice-sounding-thing-when-someone-dies stuff.

Of course that paragraph is a gift for the racists “saying the right thing is not in his BLOOD” and so on. Which is bullshit – as many people with “Jewish blood” are actually very good at this sort of thing.

Still I am no good at it (or even much interested in it) and never have been – including with the deaths of people I know personally and relations and so on. At that point I could have used the debating trick of saying not “relations” but “my own mother and father” – but I despise that sort of emotional trick (such as “young enough to be my son” which is designed to get the words “my son” into the minds of the reader or hearer).

I tried to explain (briefly) the moral and practical basis for the anarchist position – the moral basis being that taking money by force and giving people orders (backed up by threats) is a violation of the nonaggression principle. And the practical basis being that “limited governments” do not stay limited – whether one tries to limit the state by customs and traditions, or by a formal written constitution.

I do not share the anarchist position – but it is a very powerful one (both the “state is just a bunch of criminals” as a matter of theory – or the “when have your efforts to limit the state actually worked” on a practical basis).

It is the man’s position that he cared about. His death was not the time to attack his position (although I did indicate that I did not share it) – but to remind people (including me) that the anarchist position is a powerful one.

As for the “orignial threat topic” (i.e. the racist stuff).

I do take racists seriously – I was a security guard for many years, if I did not take people seriously (in the sense of being wary of them) I would not be about. I take racists serious on the basis of…..

How many of them are there?

If there is only one racist, is he a big bloke – big enough to be danger?

Taking their ARGUMENTS seriously is totally different.

Take the argument that (for example) Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are “niggers” and that white Americans (such as Woodrow Wilson? after all this was the man who introduced racial segregation into the Federal government – “smash the state” say the “White Liberation” crowd, but at least his was a racist state – they could have all have watched “Birth of a Nation” together) are better.

The idea that while people (such as Woodrow Wilson) are automatically better than black people (such as Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell) is a load of crap – I do not take that position seriously at all.

Should (for example) Rick Perry turn against his own brother in law because the man happens to be “hispanic” – i.e. to have brown skin? By the way – take a good look at Perry himself, perhaps he is not a “real”, white, American (very dark eyes and a face that is shaped in a way that I have seen in a thousand Westerns – on the heads of people who had feathers in their hair, “now I am not saying….. but……”) and on and on….

Perhaps it is good that with some exceptions (such as the Progressive “Teddy” Roosevelt and his allies) Republicans have “only cared about one color – and that color is green” (money) leaving “group politics” (whether it be Jim Crow or racial preferences – not “opposites” at all, the same principle GROUP POLITICS applied in different ways) to their “enlighted” and “educated” foes.

The “Babbits” (the despised “uneducated”local businessmen AND their employees – for, much to the horror of the academics, there was no basic difference between them) defeated the K.K.K. in”Middletown” (really Munsie Indiana) and despised them as much as they did the socialist “intellectuals” doing the “Middletown” socialogical study. And these despised “Babbits” opposed BOTH the Soviets and the supposed “racial allies” of white Americans – the Nazis. See the pages of the “Chicago Tribune” back its great days of the 1930s and 1940s (before the death of Colonel McC).

By the way “who benefits”?

The old legal question.

Who benefits from this racist stuff?

The people who beneift are the collectivists – the left.

They love to smear (for example) the Tea Party movement as “racist” (that would discredit opposition to big government – and the media, and so on, know that).

So if (even out of a million people) one actual racist turns up to a protest – that is the person the television crews and so on are going to focus on.

I would not be at all astonished if many of these “White Power” types turned out to be stooges for Mr Holder’s Justice Department.

By the way none of the above should be taken to mean that places like Philadelphia are not terrible.

However, within living memory there was a flourishing conservative press in Philadelphia (and other places) with a mostly black readership.

Indeed as recently as the 1940s young blacks had (nationally) a lower rate of unemployment than young whites.

What has happened is not “genetic” a matter of “blood” – the great grand parents of the present inhabitans of the inner cities were as black as the modern inhabitants are, but they would not even understand the modern “language” of the present inhabitants (let alone their attitudes and behaviour).

YOU DO NOT GET THAT SORT OF GENETIC TRANSFORMATION IN A FEW DECADES.

What has happened is polical and cultural – the work of government programs (and cultural schemes) created by leftist intellectuals, WHITE leftist intellectuals.

Yes I know many of these intellectuals were “Jewish” (although as far as I know none of them actually believed in Judaism), but many were also from “Aryan” “blood”.

I have read the piece again with a view to trying to understand KMD’s case. The piece is not particularly clearly argued, but the gist of it seems to be as follows.

KMD is makinig two broad points.

1. First, libertarianism would be bad for whites
.
In particular, the following features are alleged to be characteristic of a libertarian society and are said to be adverse to the interests of whites:

a. Chronic instability

b. Open borders

c. Loose sexual morals

d. Exploitation of the weak and disorganized by the strong and well-organized.

e. Other miscellaneous pathologies such as the sale of children into slavery.

2. Second, libertarianism would be good for jews.

This is because:

a. High levels of immigration would lessen the political and cultural influence of whites and thus reduce anti-jewish prejudice

b. The open nature of a libertarian society would also reduce anti-jewish prejudice

c. Respect for property rights would enable Jews to maintain their “strangehold” over the media.

Therefore libertarianism is to be opposed by whites because it is both adverse to their interests and because it is (or is potentially) a tool whereby jews will further their own interests to the detriment of whites.

“So you agreeing with me about shutting the fuck up” – yes Ian, on reflection it was not a very bad thought after all.

Besides I have just found out that John Hospers has died. An exceptional man – whose life was dedicated to “the long defeat” (to steal a line from a Tolkien character).

A man of much greater talents than me and anyone I know – yet with so little to show for it.

Perhaps civilization is indeed doomed – civil society (traditional liberties and their foundation in private property) doomed to fall to first tyranny and tnen chaos – for statism will fail, and then the tribals (such as the “White Libertationists” and the “Black Liberarationists” and the “Brown Liberationists” – or whatever) take over pushing the world into a new Dark Age. Unless there is some factor I can not see (quite possible – for I can not see more than is around me, there is so much out of view).

Still – fight, fight and fight again.

Fight till one can not fight any more – and then fight some more.

“Do not go gentle into that good night – but rage, rage against the dying of the light”.

Libertarianism omits the interest rate problem, and is indeed weak on immigration. A one-two punch, knocking whites to the mat.

Capitalism is a problem as it is by definition concerned with profits and not with national identity or race. Thus we see Wall Street firms pushing the open borders idea, while they transfer factories overseas to reduce labor costs while they help import a low skill, cheap labor force to use inside the US. . ‘Whites’ are thus harmed. Libertarianism seems to want very little government while they want businesses to be mostly left alone- we would see even more destruction of the border and more dilution of the white racial group. What is necessary is an economics tied to a polity that would enshrine admiration for, and protections of, those of white European descent. Libertarianism isn’t the answer

And, for example, my aunt is not only white – she was (in her youth) blond haired.

In fact it was my mother (who had not one drop of “Jewish blood” in her) who was sometimes mistaken for a Jew. Not my father.

This whole race thing is silly.

For example, how are people like Joe Stalin and Adolf Hilter better than people like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams?

Why can not people be judged on their beliefs and upon their actions – not upon their skin colour?

“The interest rate problem”

Oh no – I supect that the monetary crankism has appeared. Actually that puts “David Von Boch” much closer to the Wall Street crowd than he might think, they love this “low interest rate”, “monetary expansionism” ism.

And they hate the idea of lending being from REAL SAVINGS.

As for Austrian School economics – the founder was (of course) Carl Menger.

Not a banker – and not a Jew.

By the way the only professional banker ever to become President of the United States was Martin Van Buren.

Perhaps the most ANTI government support for banking person to ever be President of the United States – totally hostile to Federal government money touching banks (even for “safe keeping”) at any time.

As for wages……

When Britain (and then the United States) were rising industrial powers wages in these places were the HIGHEST of any major nation in the world.

It is endless regulations (such as the”anti trust” regulations that have hit so many American manufacturing companies – and the pro union regulations that have hit manufacturing in both nations) and endless statism (including the credit bubble, government rigged, financial system) that have undermined manufacturing.

Regulations may have the intention of “helping the worker” – but, in the end. they have the effect of making wages and conditions of work worse than would have other wise been the case.

For the ultimate union city – see Detroit, and it has also been (for 50 years) a city specially picked out for govenrment interventionism.

“And it is run by blacks”.

Yes it is – but when the fatal choices were made it was actually run by whites. The blacks have just carried on the same policies.

I doubt a Mayor Walter Williams or a Mayor Thomas Sowell (or Star Parker or Alan West or…..) would have done so.

The colour of someone’s skin is not what matters (any more than whether or not they have a foreskin).

What matters is what people actually believe – their ideas, not their skin.